1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to liquid crystal display elements, and more particularly, to liquid crystal display elements with high speed electrooptical response and conducting layers specially treated with a surface electromagnetic wave.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is well known that properties of registered media, in the development of modern displays, for example, are important for information processing. These properties are responsible for reversible processes, for example, in such materials as liquid crystal that stimulate the development of optical memory devices, real-time laser amplitude-phase correctors and new display elements. In these media, writing, reading, modulation and switching of the information are realized, in particular, with variations of refractive index. The basic unit of these processes is an interface condition between liquid crystal mesophase and orientation of conducting layers. The influence of operating and interface conditions on dynamic characteristics of the liquid crystal registered media has been shown in the following references [1-6]:
[1] R. S. McEwen, “Liquid crystals, displays and devices for optical processing”, J. Phys. B: Sci. Instrum., Vol. 20, pp. 364-377 (1987).
[2] M. Schadt, “Linear and non-linear liquid crystal materials, electro-optical effects and surface interactions. Their application in present and future devices”, Liq. Cryst., 14, pp. 73-104 (1993).
[3] N. V. Kamanina and N. A. Vasilenko, “High-speed SLM with a photosensitive polymer layer,” Electron. Lett., Vol. 31, pp. 394-395 (1995).
[4] N. V. Kamanina and N. A. Vasilenko, “Influence of operating conditions and of interface properties on dynamic characteristics of liquid-crystal spatial light modulators”, Opt. Quantum Electron., Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 1-9 (1997).
[5] N. V. Kamanina, “Fullerene-dispersed liquid crystal structure: dynamic characteristics and self-organization processes”, Physics-Uspekhi, Vol. 48,No. 4, pp. 419-427 (2005).
[6] V. V. Belyaev, <<Using substrate with different surface microrelief in the optoelectronics and information processing>>, Optich. Zhurn., Vol. 72, No. 9, c. 79-85 (2005). The authors of the above references have clearly demonstrated the possibilities to improve the dynamic parameters of the devices by changing geometric dimensions of the structure, characteristics of the supply voltage, changing the delay between applied supply voltage and laser pulse, optimizing the dynamic and spectral range of light irradiation, modifying the physical-chemical properties of nematic liquid crystal (“nematic LC”), applying the substrate with different surface microrelief, etc. A weak point of the references mentioned above, however, is the presence of an additional alignment layer in a complicated sandwich structure of the liquid crystal display element. The additional alignment layer decreases the transparency of the device and thus requires a sufficiently increased applied voltage.
Up to now, the question of improving the dynamic relaxation processes has been an open question. It is well known that the relaxation processes are responsible for the speed (e.g., high-speed switching) of the liquid crystal systems such as an electrooptical response of display elements. This problem is investigated in the present disclosure.
It should be noticed, that when different technology improvements have been used, the switching parameters of current display elements of different industry companies are in a range of about 4 milliseconds to about 16 milliseconds (ms). For example, see the following references [7-10]:
[7] http://www.astera.ru/displaynews/?id=37795 (“ΠpO 3BOTe -CeeB IyT“3OOTyIO cepeHy”).
[8] http://www.astera.ru/displaynews/?id=37228 (“LC-monitor with TV-tuner from Samsung”).
[9] http://www.astera.ru/displaynews/?id=38080 (“Two new LCD-monitors from IIYAMA company”.
[10] htpp://www.meadowlark.com (“Custom liquid crystal capabilities”).
For example, in reference [8] the switching parameters of a typical nematic LC have been indicated, which have been placed in a range of about 4 ms to about 8 ms and used by the assignee of the present application. It should be mentioned, that a thickness of electrooptical layers used in references [8 and 11] (e.g., [11] V. V. Belyaev, “Universal market of large dimension display”, Electronic components, No. 10, c. 18-30 (2004)) has been placed in a range of about 3 micrometers to about 4 micrometers. To decrease the switching times of electrooptical response, unique electric schemes and synchronizing process between electrical voltage and laser pulse, as well as the smectic LC, have been applied. However, alignment of smectic LC layers has been observed to be problematic. Moreover, the smectic LC structures are very expensive because they contain many components. The problems mentioned above retard the development and industrial application of ferroelectric liquid crystal displays (“LCDs”).
The method proposed in a reference [12] (e.g., [12] P. Ya. Vasilyev, N. V. Kamanina, “Fullerene-containing liquid crystal spatial light modulator with conducting layers treated by surface electromagnetic wave”, ZhTF Lett., T. 33, No. 1, c. 17-22 (2007)) can be considered as a new step to improve the switching parameters of a liquid crystal display element via decreasing the relaxation time of LC mesophase. In this reference [12], the experimental realization of a thin nematic layer (e.g., thickness of about 10 micrometers to about 12 micrometers) has been shown, which provide a complete cycle switch-on/switch-off duration time of 1 ms. The authors of the reference [12] have used the traditional nematic LC from cyanobiphenyl group, as well as having applied the optimized twisted nematic (“TN”) LC with low conductivity. The reference [12] can be considered as a prototype of the present invention. However, a weak point of this prototype includes connection using only a planar configuration of the display element. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that these switching characteristics of the nematic LC display element have not been found in the prior art up to now.